


Someday

by Quietbang



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Don't Ask Don't Tell, Historical, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Military
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-23
Updated: 2011-08-23
Packaged: 2017-10-23 00:19:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quietbang/pseuds/Quietbang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack's memories can be divided into two categories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Someday

Jack's childhood memories can be divided into two categories: before his father died, and after.

The Before time is remembered as a series of sensations: the hard, choking dust of an overwhelming landscape.  
The smell of apple blossoms.  
Thick, cloying incense and mellifluous Latin chants.  
The bitter, sweat and adrenaline taste of Timothy Hardwin's lips.  
The acrid fear-stench and bloodied face of soft, effeminate Jerry Stephens.

The After time has its own set of sensations.  
The alien pallor of a Chicago night sky.  
His brother Tom's faded, patched over-alls that brought the scent of the plant home with them every night.  
The muffled, choking sounds his mother made at night and heard through the thin apartment walls. Her pale, tired face, the new found shadows and lines ageing her ten years for every one.  
The hard, terror-lump that formed in his stomach when Bobby Davies asked who he was sweet on and he just barely stopped himself from saying 'you'.  
The feel of Anna Laurie's soft, firm breasts, revealed in his borrowed car the night of prom. The harsh gasp of his mother when she opened the door to reveal the telegram man and she knew, by some strange maternal premonition, that Tommy was dead in Vietnam before she opened the envelope.  
The look on her face, part pain and part pride, when he graduated high school and joined the Air Force.

After that, the memories come fast and furious.  
Dancing with Sara at his graduation dance. Flying planes in enemy airspace, the adrenaline drugging out the thoughts of the people in the planes he shot at.  
The pure, endless blue of the sky.  
Whispered prayers over his brother's wooden rosary before each flight.  
His pride at each successive commendation, before his eventual recruitment into special operations.  
The fear and shame and guilt that was only slightly outweighed by the pleasure of an orgasm gained in a back alley of the seedy part of town.

Throwing up for ten minutes straight after a successful op where, for the first time, he killed someone with his bare hands without the mediating detachment of a weapon.  
His joy at the birth of his son tempered by his secret conviction that people like him didn't deserve to be fathers.

Four months of pain and anger and disassociation in a steaming filthy cell. The feeling that, despite being home, he might never truly leave the same.

The crack of gunfire ending a life, and, at the same time, his marriage. The next six months spent at the end of that gunshot, viewed through an amber haze.

Being ordered on a suicide mission and thinking, 'Why not? It'll save the cost of a bullet.”  
The shattering of that haze by an arrogant, geeky, vaguely girly scientist who, in the enquiring of why, exactly, he felt that the people of Abydos should die with him- but _not_ questioning his right to die. There are a lot of people, over the years, that he's trusted with his life. Daniel Jackson was the first one he trusted to let him die.  
The inexplicable loss he felt when he bid him goodbye, knowing he would never see him again.  
The joy, and something else he wasn't willing to put a name to, that he felt when he saw him again, deliberately brushing him off to cover the overwhelming relief he felt.

The feeling of being truly happy, of _living_ , for the first time in years, maybe for the first time since his father died.  
The slowly building longing he felt for the younger man.  
The insanity triggered by his believed loss.  
The horror that suffused his entire being when he saw the man withdraw inwards after the actions of that fucking bitch-whore of a date-raping Goa'uld.  
His shame and pain at breaking his own cardinal rule, and leaving him behind to die- tempered only, a few minutes later, by the certain knowledge that he, too, was going to die.  
The growing longing, the need for contact with him that he tried to pass off as friendship, using any excuse possible to touch him.

The realisation that what he felt wasn't affection, wasn't lust, but was something deeper than that- and distancing himself as a result.

Watching the slow hardening of his face, the long downward spiral, and feeling the guilt of knowing that it was partially his fault.

Watching him, compassionate to the end, die an agonizing death for the sake of a people who showed no gratitude.

The agonising, soul-destroying blackness that followed. Covering his loneliness by chasing someone he didn't particularly want, and who was in any event, both too young and too ill-suited to him- not like Daniel, who for all his youth had never been young. Realising, with a horrifying jolt, that she was falling in love with him.

The agony of torture negated slightly by the glimpses of the man who, he could admit now, he had loved.  
The joy of getting him back – only to realise that he had no idea who he was. The slow, up-hill stride of realisation and returned memories; losing him again almost the minute after they all returned. Returning to Colorado with a half-delirious Daniel beside him, chest, thighs and genitals covered in bruises and electrical burns.

Which brought them here. To his house, and to a slightly woozy Daniel, hopped up on painkillers and stubbornly avoiding sleep. To a kiss that he quickly broke off.

“Wha-” Daniel started, reaching out to touch Jack's cheek. “Why? I know you want this, Jack. You've wanted it since the beginning.”  
 _Because I'm not a fag_ , Jack didn't say. _Because I'm only going to hurt you.  
Because it's disgusting._  
Jack didn't say any of these things. Maybe, in the old days, he could have. Maybe Daniel would have only left, or yelled at him, or looked hurt. But this Daniel was hard, and fierce, and aggressively masculine, and he wouldn't think twice about punching him in the face for any of those responses.  
So instead, he leaned back against the couch and rubbed his eyes. He was too old for this.  
“Because I won't disgrace the uniform.”  
Daniel's eyes flashed with a mixture of pity and contempt.  
“DADT's bullshit, and you know it.”  
Jack decided not to argue with him on that point.  
“The frat regs aren't. I'm your CO.”  
Daniel sighed and closed his eyes. When he opened them, Jack caught a glimpse of something hard and sad and immeasurably _old_.  
“You won't always be.”  
“No.”  
“So..”  
“So?”  
“Maybe someday?”  
“Maybe.”  
 _I doubt it,_ Jack didn't say.


End file.
